Commentary

Brief Description

Trade card of Larcher, merchant stationer (marchand papetier) of the King's tax collectors, At the Black Head. The image is etched. The design consists of a representation of the shop sign, and a text area.

The image shows the head of a black man dressed in Turkish costume with a jeweled turban, caftan, and slave band. He is framed by leafy scrolls intertwined with a recurved band decorated with an egg and dart motif. The cartouche for the engraved inscription is in the form of a lambrequin. The whole is surrounded by an uneven double rule.

Curatorial Commentary

This card is similar in design, though showing a different address, to an illustrated example in Grand-Carteret (see Related documents) for a title-page with an ornamented scrollwork border, for a commercial collection or album entitled 'Lettres de Voitures Connoissemens & prix courans, année 1737', produced by Larcher Marchand, at the Cloistre St Mederie, à la Teste Noire, Paris. Grand-Carteret describes six cards for Larcher, and illustrates three examples. Larcher was active from c. 1720 to around 1762, he moved from rue des Arcis (3 cards) to Cloître Saint-Mederic (1 card) to Rue de la Verrerie (2 cards), keeping the same shop sign.

For a later card see 3686.1.64.119. A further design can be found in the Bibliothèque nationale, Adresses Commerciales, 2 Vols. BN Estampes Li. 4g (1-2). The upper half of the card has a framed tondo of the head and shoulders of a African slave boy. He looks out at the viewer; his lips are open. He wears pearl earings; a silk jacket and waistcoat and a slave collar. Text appears in the lower half of the card. I am grateful to Dena Goodman for this reference.

At the Black Head. Rue des Arcis in Paris. Larcher, paper merchant of the King's tax collectors sells all sorts of beautiful and good paper, good Dutch quills, real concentrated lustrous ink, the finest wax from Spain, Morocco leather locking wallets and boxes adorned with gold and silver, and all other kinds of goods in his line of business wholesale and retail

Language:

French

History

Provenance:

Acquired by Baron Ferdinand de Rothschild (b.1839, d.1898) before 1897; inherited by his sister Alice de Rothschild (b.1847, d.1922); inherited by her great-nephew James de Rothschild (b.1878, d.1957); bequeathed to Waddesdon The Rothschild Collection (The National Trust) in 1957.